Gortduv loop: homes at the end of the world

Another glorious day we decided to head out and try a new loop walk on the Mizen, all 13.5km of it : Gortduv loop, the black field loop. It was magical but pretty strenuous and a fair amount of up and down but the boreens were tiny and the view colossal. Finola has written about it here. That's the Sheep's Head in the distance of my main pic and we were both captivated by the old barn. The hedgerows were rampant with wildflowers, in fact there were even orchids growing in the middle of the road! We saw choughs, a buzzard, lots of stonechats and some meadow pipits, plus a teeny calf sporting a smart coat. We laughed at the  signage - the term busy road is use loosely - and looked out for mad sheep. We ate cheese and biscuits by a deserted pier and marvelled at the colours of the water. A little depressingly, we were surprised at the number of large architect designed houses lurking in  the most remote spots, the majority clearly  looking like holiday homes. In fact we were astonished at the number of plainly unoccupied homes, one such was sporting this gorgeous but not indigenous display of wildflowers.
We rewarded ourselves with ice creams in Goleen and are now nursing sore feet. A great hike. I've added a lot of extras but they will be disappearing shortly!